Three Illinois schools make list of top 50 LGBT-friendly colleges and universities

On Friday, nonprofit group Campus Pride released its sixth annual list of the nation's top 50 LGBT-friendly colleges and universities. Three Illinois schools made the unranked list: The University of Chicago, University of Illinois–Chicago and Southern Illinois University–Carbondale.

It may be surprising not to see more Chicago-area schools make this list—Roosevelt University, for one, has a strong reputation for gay inclusiveness and advocacy as part of its social justice–oriented mission. It's worth noting, however, that the list is based on schools' own self-assessments of their policies, programs and practices on Campus Pride's benchmarking tool. It's possible that schools that would rank at the top of a survey of LGBT student populations didn't participate in Campus Pride's program, or that school administrators who saw room for improvement would rate themselves lower than their students would. See the full 50 here.

Kris is a Senior Editor at Time Out Chicago, covering theater and dance, comedy and LGBT events. He can give you the best CTA route to every theater in the city, and you can probably find him at one of them tonight. Follow him on Twitter at @krisvire.